Appearances often deceive. Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature” landed on my desk in the immediate aftermath of that terrible massacre in Norway. As I read the book, Syrian forces slaughtered pro-democracy protesters, riots engulfed English cities, and murders punctuated the news. But, if we believe Pinker, all this violence is just the background noise behind a relentless paean of peace.
He’s probably right. The world today is less violent than it has ever been. We’re living through the longest period without war between great powers since Roman times. All other categories of violence — murder, rape, child abuse, wife-battering — have also declined. Pinker thinks his revelations are Earth-shattering, but, in fact, he’s merely proved something that most historians have long accepted, namely that there’s no reason to be nostalgic about the past.
(VIKING) - ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’ by Steven Pinker
Most people, however, think they live in uniquely violent times, a popular misconception that encourages panic. Travelers frightened of terrorism spurn airplanes in favor of much more dangerous cars. Parents worried about sidewalk pedophiles drive children to school and thereby exponentially increase the risks they face. The world seems violent partly because films, Web sites, video games and music pummel us with images of brutality. Parents cringe when Ice Cube boasts: “I can act like an animal, ain’t nothin’ to it/Gangsta rap made me do it.” Pinker, however, thinks that’s simply hot air — pretend violence has replaced the real thing.
The rather unfortunate title of this book will encourage readers to assume that this is another installment in self-help spiritualism encouraging us to befriend our angels. In fact, the book is populated not by winged cherubs, but by cold rationalists. The bibliography stretches to 32 pages, testimony to Pinker’s zealous research. More than 100 graphs assess the extent of violence and chart the evolution of control mechanisms. Many of those graphs look remarkably similar: A diagonal line moves from top left to bottom right, charting how violence has declined.
Statistics, however, also deceive. Pinker’s avalanche of evidence camouflages dodgy analysis. For instance, he frequently mentions that blacks in America are peculiarly susceptible to violence. Statistics bear that out, but the painful truths that lie beneath those raw numbers need careful handling. Instead, Pinker cites the connection between matrimony and passivity, arguing that blacks are violent in part because they are notoriously unenthusiastic about marriage: “Perverse welfare incentives . . . encouraged young [black] women to ‘marry the state’ instead of the fathers of their children.” Reckless analysis of this sort can foster dangerous bigotry.
Pinker aggressively discounts economic explanations, arguing that violence rose from the late 1960s to the ’90s (when times were good) and fell after 2001 (when recession hit). Yet that glib assessment ignores how specific social classes have fared. Some groups that never benefited from postwar prosperity grew impatient with inequality by the late 1960s. Pinker fails to see how violence became a logical expression of anger for them. “The urban riots . . . [of] the 1960s,” he argues, “were not a part of the civil rights movement and erupted after most of its milestones were in place.” That’s nonsense. The riots were a response to the limitations of the civil rights movement, namely its inability to address material inequality as opposed to legal discrimination. They led directly to the Kerner Commission report of 1968, which inspired positive programs to address inner-city problems. A generation later, those programs contributed to the decline in violence that Pinker celebrates.
These books offer keen insights into leadership and management challenges, which on a day-to-day basis can bring their own dramas, twisting plot lines and, in this city, political intrigue.
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